[[Mohan K.V 2014-11-27, 21:15:47 Source]]
सदास्वादः
71
न्यक्कारो ह्ययम् एव मे यद् अरयस् ; तत्राप्य् असौ तापसः
(nyakkāro hyayam eva me yad arayas ; tatrāpy asau tāpasaḥ)
Meaning
“Enemies – that [plural word] is itself a humiliation for me! And on top of that he’s an ascetic!” Perhaps the speaker might have reconciled with one misguided fool becoming his enemy, but enemies? More than one?! The shame! The poetic heart of this line is in that plural word ‘enemies’, which we can imagine spoken with great shock and disbelief. Likewise, we can naturally imagine ‘nyakkāra’ ‘humiliation’ and ‘tāpasa’ ‘ascetic’ spoken with great contempt. Phew, there appears to be as much work for our imagination as there has been for the line’s creator’s!
Context
This chapter’s phrase is from an example verse in Ānanda-vardhana’s Dhvanyāloka (“Seeing echoes”). Ānanda-vardhana is one of the most celebrated names in Sanskrit poetics (‘alaṅkāra-śāstra’), and lived about 1200 years ago in Kashmir. A couple of his poetic writings are available to us, but they are not as well-known.
Starting with Bharata-muni more than 2000 years ago, there has flowed a rich, continuous stream of debate on just what poetry and poetic beauty are. Bhāmaha, Daṇḍin, Vāmana, Rājaśekhara, Bhaṭṭa-tauta, Kṣemendra, Kuntaka, Mahima-bhaṭṭa, Rudraṭa, Mammaṭa, Bhoja, Appayya Dīkṣita, Jagannātha and dozens of other have been interlocutors in this millennia-long conversation, each making observations, propounding theories and commenting on others’ theories. Modern writers on Sanskrit starting with Acharya P. V. Kane, Dr. V. Raghavan and Dr. K. Krishnamurthy have continued this conversation into our times.
Ānanda-vardhana’s Dhvanyāloka (together with its commentaries, chiefly Abhinavagupta’s Locana ‘The eye’ [for ‘seeing echoes’]) exists in this context, and is widely regarded as being one of the finest expositions of the lot. It offers a holistic view on poetry, and going beyond mere classification and detailing individual elements (like alaṅkāras). The Dhvanyāloka contends that the soul of poetry is suggestion. As they echo in our minds, the words of a good poem go beyond just their literal meanings and suggest to us a variety of distinct images, ideas and moods. This quality of echo-suggestion is termed ‘Dhvani’; the richer the result of the suggestion, the more beautiful is the poem judged.
This is a remarkably broad definition: who of us hasn’t constructed epic-length back-stories from just the slight curve of a beloved’s mischievous smile? Or burnt with hellfire at the quiet smirk of an adversary lasting just a blink? A talented artist draws just a few strokes, and let us imagine the full picture; every subtle flourish makes our mind fill in another detail. Ānanda-vardhana’s generosity lets use see poetry everywhere!
The Dhvanyāloka consists of 4 sections, and is arranged in a fairly ‘typical’ fashion, defining terms, invoking previous commenter’s statements, refuting them, and giving examples. In our view, works on poetics, no matter what their theory, provide a wonderful opportunity to discover gems of poetry that have shone on for centuries. They are somewhat like beauty contests – the fun is in the beauties, not the nitty-gritties of the contest. In our first pass, we’ll go over a few examples that struck us as especially illuminating or beautiful, and return to the theory in a later edition.
Near the beginning, Ānanda-vardhana talks of a kind of irony, where the intended effect is opposite of what is actually said:
भ्रम धार्मिक विश्रब्धः स शुनको ऽद्य मारितस्तेन ।
गोदा-नदी-कच्छ-निकुञ्ज-वासिना दृप्त-सिंहेन ।।1.4+
bhrama dhārmika viśrabdhaḥ sa śunakaḥ adya māritaḥ tena |
godā-nadī-kaccha-nikuñja-vāsinā dṛpta-siṃhena ||
“Oh you can roam around freely now, O monk! That dog has been killed,
by the wild lion that lurks in the bowers of the Godāvarī river.”
That dog presumably was giving the monk trouble, but that’s gone now. He just has to deal with the lion (which appears at the very end of the verse to shock him even more) :-)
Later on, a more complex kind of allusion is discussed:
शिखरिणि क्व नु नाम कियच्चिरं
किम् अभिधानम् असाव् अकरोत् तपः ।
तरुणि येन तवाधर-पाटलं
दशति बिम्बफलं शुक-शावकः ।।1.14-
śikhariṇi kva nu nāma kiyacciraṃ
kim abhidhānam asau akarot tapaḥ |
taruṇi yena tava adhara-pāṭalaṃ
daśati bimbaphalaṃ śuka-śāvakaḥ ||
“On which holy mountain, for how long, and of what kind, did this baby parrot perform its great tapas,
O lovely maiden, that it now bites this fruit that’s as red as your lips?”
Just to bite a mere fruit that has just the redness of the maiden’s lips, the poet assumes that the bird had to perform a great tapas (austerity to please a god) on a mountain for a long time! The indirections are multifold – the redness of her lips; the great fortune of the parrot in biting a fruit which has just that redness in common – and the poet is so certain that even that is so amazing, that he gets to business asking for the details of the tapas! In the Sanskrit verse, the questioning comes first, giving it a heightened suspense.
Hold on, what about biting the maiden’s lips? Perish the thought! Don’t vex us with such impossible (but infinitely desirable) dreams!
The dhvani alone would have made her blush in a manner that called for another verse :-)
Later on, Ānanda-vardhana gets to describing how suggestion can be incorporated in a verse. The natural way to do it is via the meaning of course, like in the examples above. But it turns out, even such subtle choices as word-endings (like plurals) and exclamations can add to the suggestive power:
न्यक्कारो ह्ययम् एव मे यद् अरयस् ; तत्राप्य् असौ तापसः
सो ऽप्यत्रैव निहन्ति राक्षस-कुलं जीवत्यहो रावणः ।
धिग् धिक् चक्र-जितं प्रबोधितवता किं कुम्भकर्णेन वा
स्वर्ग-ग्रामटिका-विलुण्ठन-वृथोच्छूनैः किम् एभिर् भुजैः ।।3.16+
nyakkāraḥ hi ayam eva me yad arayaḥ ; tatrāpi asau tāpasaḥ
saḥ api atraiva nihanti rākṣasa-kulaṃ jīvati aho rāvaṇaḥ |
dhig dhik cakra-jitaṃ prabodhitavatā kiṃ kumbhakarṇena vā
svarga-grāmaṭikā-viluṇṭhana-vṛthocchūnaiḥ kim ebhir bhujaiḥ ||
“Enemies – that [plural word] is itself a humiliation for me! And on top of that he’s an ascetic!
And he is killing Rākṣasas right here – and yet, [the mighty] Rāvaṇa lives!
Damn! Damn this! What is the point of Indrajit or waking up Kumbhakarṇa,
or even these arms of mine, worthlessly fattened by conquering that wretched hamlet of Indra?”
What a masterpiece! This is the kind of verse we imagine would take up entire lectures and still leave a packed crowd wanting more!
It is clear that it is being spoken by Rāvaṇa after suffering some initial downturns at the hands of Rāma’s army. Indrajit, Rāvaṇa’s son, has lost and Kumbhakarṇa is just being woken up. Rāvaṇa is incredulous that it even has come to this stage. In the first line, the stress is on ‘arayaḥ’, ‘enemies’ in the plural. The plural form of the word itself infuriates him! One enemy may be chalked down to [the enemy’s] foolishness or bad luck – but enemies? Has the stature of Rāvaṇa fallen so low that multiple people think they can take on the burden of his enmity?! And adding insult to injury, this enemy happens to be a ‘tāpasa’ [Rāma], an ascetic, with no kingdom nor his own army, depending on monkeys! We can almost hear the contempt with which that word is uttered! ‘nyakkāra’ ‘humiliation’ by its very sound and the clenching of teeth required to say it suggests disgust and anger.
The stress on the second line is on ‘atraiva’ ‘right here’ and ‘aho’ [an exclamation of mock surprise]. Rāma is killing Rāvaṇa’s rākṣasas – in fact, their very lineage rākṣasakulaṃ – right under his nose! And yet, aho! Rāvaṇa lives! This can be read in two ways – first, that Rāvaṇa can even bear to live under such humiliating circumstances; second, that in spite of Rāma chopping off the rākṣasas, Rāvaṇa somehow lives, and this is a surprise – maybe because he snivelled out and is hiding somewhere? The horror of people making such allusions!!
The third line breezily brushed aside, oh damn all these tactics of sending Indrajit or waking up Kumbha-karṇa, those are details. Dhik, Dhik, to hell with them!
A mighty compound describes Rāvaṇa’s muscular arms – he once went on a rampage and conquered Indra’s heaven (svarga) with just his bare hands. That was so easy (relative to the current challenge) that he dismissively refers to heaven as grāmaṭikā – ‘grāma’ would have been ‘village’, which itself would have been an insult to the great Indra’s heaven; but ‘grāmaṭikā’, ‘wretched village’ drives it even further. ‘vṛthā ucchūnaiḥ’ – ‘worthlessly fattened’ – what is the point of all that strength if a mere ascetic can challenge him now?
Phew, we could go on for a lot longer, but it’s clear that every element of this verse is a stroke of the highest genius! Who would have thought that such intense poetry lurked in just plural forms, space-fillers like ‘atra’ and ‘aho’ and in suggestive speeds of reading? Truly a masterpiece of Dhvani!
An aside about achieving a similar effect in modern English is probably in order. Sanskrit, when written, has had no punctuation or formatting styles (bold, italics, etc.) whatsoever – sentence breaks (। and ॥) were the most one could hope for, and they too did little more than signify a stop. In contrast, in modern English, we have an extraordinarily complex system of punctuation and formatting that does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to describing tone, mood and intent. As with every utilitarian tool, creativity is sacrificed for efficiency. A simple italicisation will signify a stress that a Sanskrit poet would have had to use ingenious methods to induce. Using “scare quotes” signifies skepticism without as much as a whisper, a luxury that obviates Sanskrit poets’ cleverness in fitting words like chadmanā or -ṃ-manya. What to talk of bullet points – even English writers lament that they kill any need for creativity in paragraph formation, reducing writing to a purely transactional medium! Poor Sanskrit poets trying to keep a narrative thread going through the needle-holes of metre would just give up if they saw a corporate presentation!
Therefore, it is all the more impressive when a Sanskrit verse manages to suggest a tone or mood without any such crutches. We only need to understand the verse to automatically read the lines with contempt, mock surprise or breezy dismissal as needed. That is the true power of Dhvani!
Parting Thought
Later in the work, when Ānanda-vardhana is talking of using opposed sentiments for effect, he quotes:
सत्यं मनोरमा रामाः सत्यं रम्या विभूतयः ।
किन्तु मत्ताङ्गनापाङ्ग-भङ्ग-लोलं हि जीवितम् ॥3.30+
satyaṃ manoramā rāmāḥ satyaṃ ramyā vibhūtayaḥ |
kintu mattāṅganāpāṅga-bhaṅga-lolaṃ hi jīvitam ||
“Yes, these damsels are charming; yes, these riches are delightful;
but life itself is as fleeting as the fickle glances of a tipsy girl!”
The ‘conciliatory’ tone of the first half automatically comes through because of the use of ‘nodding’ words like ‘satyaṃ’, and the subject is light. This makes for a great contrast with the second half, which is about the heavy and difficult subject of mortality – and yet, even that is delivered via the ever-so-fickle glaces of a drunk maiden! Why, the maiden and her drink may have come only for the riches of the first line. Even the sound of the second half lightly skips over the nasal sounds (‘ṅga’s), as if imitating those glances it is describing. Above all this, the innocent gentleness of the metre’s flow makes for a profound contrast with the depth of the message!
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